Cooling & Heating

Centralised Cooling & Heating

Centralised cooling and heating solutions are central to SP Group’s commitment to create a low-carbon, smart energy future. SP’s energy-efficient cooling and heating systems are enabling districts and townships, in Singapore and China, to achieve their sustainability objectives.

Marina Bay District Cooling System

SP Group designed and operates the world’s largest fully underground district cooling network in Singapore’s Marina Bay financial district. It started operations in May 2006 with One Raffles Quay as its first customer to receive chilled water supplies for its air-conditioning needs. In May 2010, SP commissioned its second district cooling plant at the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort.

As one of Singapore’s Top 50 Engineering Feats, the Marina Bay district cooling system now serves more than 20 developments in the area, helping the district to save up to 20,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. Amongst SP’s customers are developments such as Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay, Raffles Place MRT Station, One Marina Boulevard and the Marina Bay Financial Centre.

Tengah Centralised Cooling System

In collaboration with the Housing & Development Board, SP Group will be bringing its first large-scale residential centralised cooling system to Tengah, Singapore’s first smart energy township. With SP’s centralised cooling system, Tengah residents can enjoy as much as 30 per cent energy savings.

Chilled water will be centrally produced from interconnected modular chiller plants built on the roof tops before it is distributed to residential and commercial units for air-conditioning. The centralised cooling system will also be serviced by SP, bringing greater convenience to residents living in Tengah.

Distributed District Cooling Network

Brownfield District Cooling Feasibility Study: Tampines Central Distributed District Cooling Network

In highly developed cities like Singapore, majority of land has been built up and individual building owners are already equipped with their own chiller plants. With Distributed District Cooling (DDC) network – an interconnected, centralised cooling system – existing towns and districts may now be able to enjoy a more sustainable way to cool.

To find out the sustainable impact of this innovative approach, we partnered Temasek on a feasibility study involving 14 buildings in Tampines Central, and was supported by the Tampines Group Representation Constituency (GRC) and the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE).

The results are promising. In one year, the DDC network could potentially achieve:

• A 17% reduction in energy consumption - enough to power 1,665 three-room HDB households for a year

• A 18% fall in carbon emissions from both energy savings and refrigerant reduction – equivalent to removing 2,250 cars from roads per year

• S$4.3 million in annual economic value from energy, equipment replacement and maintenance cost savings, as well as potential earnings from leasing out freed-up chiller plant space

Raffles City Chongqing

Our expertise and technology have been adopted in Raffles City Chongqing, the largest shopping mall in Chongqing, China. SP Group runs an advanced energy-efficient cooling and heating system for the mall, that commenced operations in September 2019.

SP’s cooling operations enables Raffles City Chongqing to reduce energy consumption by more than 40 per cent, compared to conventional building chiller plants.

New Developments in China

In January 2021, SP Group acquired ENGIE SA’s 40 per cent stake in Chongqing Sino-French Energy Services to form Sino-Singapore Energy Services Co. Ltd. The acquisition strengthens the Group’s District Cooling and Heating presence in Chongqing and expands our capabilities into Combined Cooling Heating and Power (CCHP) offerings for the hospital segment.

Under a partnership with People’s Government of Wuhou District, Chengdu, SP will design, build, own and operate an integrated energy solution that includes district cooling and heating system, smart metering, energy management and monitoring for the International Urban Design Centre (IUDC) in Wuhou over the next 25 years.

New partnerships and collaborations are also taking root in Shanghai and Guangzhou. SP inked a Memorandum of Understanding with State Grid Shanghai Energy Services in October 2020 to study the feasibility of jointly developing and investing in integrated energy projects to bring sustainable energy solutions to customers in Shanghai. In August 2020, SP signed an agreement with the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (GKC) to develop district cooling and heating solutions for the Knowledge Tower in GKC.

What is District Cooling?

District cooling is an innovative urban utility service involving the centralised production of chilled water that is piped to commercial buildings for air-conditioning.

Instead of individual buildings having their own chillers, district cooling reaps the benefits of economies of scale by sharing chiller capacity, operated and maintained by a large and professional team of technical staff.

With attributes similar to public electricity supply, district cooling is an energy and economically efficient urban utility service. It presents attractive value propositions to building owners:

    • Round-the-clock availability and support
    • On-demand flexibility
    • High supply reliability
    • More space for alternative use
    • Lower initial and recurrent operating costs
    • Platinum Green Mark Certification
    • Energy assessment on existing and potential savings


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Contact us at districtcooling@spgroup.com.sg if you have queries.